How to engage thousands of inactive women

In the past year we ran 2 campaigns that engaged over 1500 inactive women between them. Facebook Ads was the main tool we used for this, so I’ve explained here why Facebook Ads is so effective for engaging women.

We can reach most women through Facebook

67.7% of female internet users of any age in the UK log on to Facebook at least once a month. This is higher than men – with 57.2% of UK males logging on at least once a month.

We can choose to show our ads to just women

There’s a saying in marketing – “Half my ad budget is wasted, I just don’t know which half.” If you’re running a marketing campaign to engage women through posters and leaflets, then any budget you spend you are going to waste proportion of it by reaching men that you’re not trying to engage. However Facebook Ads give us an unprecedented ability to target women through our marketing at a huge scale. This means we don’t waste our budget.

Segmenting our audience

Sport England’s research shows us that we need to use different messages for women aged 46-55 to those aged 36-45. Facebook allows us to show different versions of our ads to women of different age groups.

Ad for reaching 36-45 year old women

Ad for reaching 46-55 year old women

Ad for reaching 56-65 year old women

A variety of great images

Facebook Ads is dependent on us using great images. In order to get the best results we need to use slightly aspirational imagery. We need to show our audience someone good looking who is slightly fitter than they are having a good time while doing the activity.

Over the past few years Sport England have developed an awesome database of photos. This Girl Can imagery is the perfect example of this. It shows normal women getting active and having a good time. It’s something to strive towards, but it’s not out of reach. Here are some examples of the This Girl Can imagery that you can download if you sign up as a partner.

Facebook Ad webinar

If you’re interested in learning more about how to use Facebook Ads to engage inactive people from hard-to-reach groups then you can sign up for our free webinar. In it we’ll cover these steps in more detail and give you a step-by-step guide to setting your ads up.